


The Unseen Players

by ch1ps0h0y



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-02
Updated: 2013-03-02
Packaged: 2017-12-05 09:06:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ch1ps0h0y/pseuds/ch1ps0h0y
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Seirin High basketball team was different from the Generation of Miracles. Maybe that's why Kuroko felt drawn to them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unseen Players

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pyrrhics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhics/gifts).



> This was written for a friend's prompt, to compare the Generation of Miracles with Seirin High. I'm not as familiar with Kurobasu as I'd like, so I'm sorry if it's a bit off ;;;

They never saw Kuroko, but Kuroko saw them.

That was always how it was, of course, and the short boy with light blue hair would not have had it any other way. In another life, he sometimes wonders if he might have been an assassin, or even a government spy, with the type of Hollywood glamour that such movies inspire at a young, impressionable age. But no - he was simply a young middle schooler, soon to be entering high school, yet he rode on almost as much fame as one of those highly-paid actors. In the eyes of other middle schoolers at any rate.

Open day at Seirin High: he had successfully passed unnoticed by the milling crowds and eager, pamphlet-waving student groups. The principal had said he would welcome prospective students at 11am in the main hall and it was now one-thirty in the afternoon. Late enough for the enthusiastic atmosphere to die down a little, late enough that what he had come to see would still be practising hard in the gymnasium.

He heard the squeak of shoes against polished floorboards long before he saw the shoes themselves. The sound was familiar and comforting, and it drew him in as if it were welcoming him home. Balls smacking against the floor and shouts from the players provided an unobtrusive backing to the dominant rhythm of the courts. The blue-haired boy's hands itched to take one of those very balls and send it flying down the court.

No-one stopped him from entering; the door was open, so he assumed that was an unspoken invitation to let himself inside. There weren't any other spectators besides himself and the one whom he assumed was the manager. The coach was easily identifiable by the whistle around her neck and the commanding way she was directing the flow of the players as they clashed. Keeping his eyes on them, the young boy took a seat on the bench next to the door and quietly pulled out a sandwich.

The players dribbled back and forth across the lacquered court, feinted passes to their team mates and shot graceful three-pointers that soared above everyone's heads. One minute the flow was paced, leisurely, the next it burst into an explosion of rapidly thumping balls and lightly-dancing feet.

It was incredible how beautiful gameplay looked from the point of view of a bystander. It was a beauty you couldn't appreciate while sweat dripped from your pores, plastering shirt to skin and threatening to form slippery puddles beneath your feet. He wondered whether anyone had thought that of him and his old team. Had anyone seen beauty to their movements, or had their eyes been blinded by the shining star of their talent?

The more Kuroko watched the players, the stronger his conviction grew. He had never cast his own light - he was more like a shadow, existing at the feet of those whom the main spotlight shone upon. Shadows by nature had to move in conjunction with the light, but did the light move as a whole or did it scatter into separate, defined colours? Shadows were darkest where the light was brightest.

He found it hard to differentiate between the individuals he was watching, even as he noted their strengths: point-guard, centre, power forward, forward. Unlike his old team, there was a uniformity about them that you couldn't shake. You had to actually look at their faces, not just glance at the colour of their hair - which, he thought, really forced you to focus on them. But that was their draw, the magnetic pull that hinted at something greater. Together they were a machine, well-oiled, smooth-running. They weren't simply the cogs and wheels which made it turn.

Kuroko balled the plastic remains of his sandwich wrapping into one hand. This year, his former team mates would be apart. Different schools, different creeds, different motivations driving them as they pursued their passion for basketball with a new set of team members. They all of them wanted to win, but none of them desired victory as a team. There was no real cohesion, no bonds that held them other than the vast talent they'd been gifted with.

Like the prism that fractures a ray of light into a spectrum of colours, the advent of high school had split the Generation of Miracles. One day they would be drawn back together in the spirit of competition as deadly opponents, having grown apart and in strength. They five could butt heads all they liked though, for Kuroko had found something that he doubted the others could claim to have.

He'd found passion, and he'd found a team which thrived upon it.

The boy with the light blue hair left the same way he had come. No-one noticed his coming, no-one noticed him leaving. He would fit right in with this team, because if you had to look that hard to see the parts for the machine, a part seemingly so unimportant would go especially unnoticed.

And being unnoticed was his speciality.


End file.
